


god has left us anyway

by phwaa



Category: Person of Interest (TV)
Genre: F/F
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-21
Updated: 2016-09-21
Packaged: 2018-08-16 12:20:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,191
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8102206
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/phwaa/pseuds/phwaa
Summary: She's ten years old, but the crash ages her double.





	

 

 

 

 

GOD HAS LEFT US ANYWAY

(Susanne Sundfør; The Brothel (LidoLido Remix))

(Based on [this](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4258440/). If you’ve seen it, I’m sorry for this. If you haven’t, go and watch it.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

\--

 

She's ten years old, but the crash ages her double.

She reaches out, feels death beneath her fingers and soaks in the puddles making paths along her skin. Burying death deep beside her heart, the first hole is built.

Her father turns, says, "this looks bad, darling, but it will soon pass". Thick and rusty and spoken in a language lost to this country. He's lost too, she knows, and yet he’ll follow her whole from out of the rubble.

The ambulance is flashing colors along the gravel, the sirens silent in the aftermath of the screeching breaks and shatter of glass. Men in uniform crowd where she knows her father’s body lies breathless.

“You’ll look after your mother, won’t you?” He asks, sitting beside her on a stretcher covered in sheets.

She doesn’t reply, watches a limp hand being pulled and dropped from the driver’s side window. His fingers curl in the cold.

“Sameen?” He says, and she nods and reaches to hold onto the hand beside her. It’s warm, but his fingers curl all the same.

 

 

He stays for three months and she learns not to respond to his questions.

Inevitably, he’s replaced. Her cat dies when she’s thirteen and it follows Shaw around for years.

Her father appears rarely, strokes the cat she forgot to name on its arrival, and gives her a wink.

Her mind is brilliant and, sometimes, she has to remind herself he’s not really there at all.

 

 

The doors are still swinging when she appears.

Alarms are still blearing and doctors are still running, but Shaw knows it's too late.

"I'm still here," her mother says, a hand resting against her right shoulder. "I won’t leave you."

Still so young and yet aged far beyond her years, Shaw understands the difference between being here and yet nowhere near.

"You're not," she says, hears the doctor calling numbers, a body jumping from the sheets and clattering down. "I've imagined you up."

Dead but not quite gone, her mother stands beside her and doesn’t seem to notice the hole in Shaw’s chest grow indecently deeper. The darkness webs out and she strains to keep it at bay. Her armor has grown thick by now.

“You’re together again.” She whispers, turning to her left and seeing her father watch the swinging doors as if captivated.

The beeping fades to a flatline which eventually fades to silence, and her mother and father remain.

 

 

It seems inescapable, the path into medicine.

People travel miles to watch her practice, to watch her plunge plastic gloves into the depths of unhealthy chests.

She saves people, mostly, and sometimes she doesn’t.

The lights are off and she swings the chair closer to the table edge. She’d seen it coming, the talk, the big bad talk about emotions and empathy and feelings too farfetched for her to reach.

Mr Loftin stands behind her throughout, nods along as her residency is slain.

“You have a brilliant mind, Sameen. And you’re very gifted.” She hears, has heard it all her life. “But you’ll never be a doctor.”

Once it’s over and she’s left alone in the darkened office, Mr Loftin steps to her side.

“Well then,” he says, clasping his hands together. Warm now that he’s dead. “Looks like you’ve lost more than me today.”

She’d brought him back to life four times on the operating table. Perhaps she would’ve done it a fifth if she knew he would follow her around too.

 

 

She meets Cole, starts a new job and creates a queue of people flickering in the corner of her mind.

Surrounded by the dead and the not quite living, she forgets who’s alive and learns to be selective in her replies.

“They’re terrorists, Shaw,” Cole says, crackling through her earpiece. “Control said they’d have material.”

Beside her, the man she’d killed at the front door sighs and shrugs, pulling a lazy hand through his thick hair. “Don’t look at me like that,” he says, guilt missing from his tone, “you don’t know me.”

Shaw finds wires and timers and red syrup beneath the sink.

“Right.” He says, “well, that’s unfortunate.”

Still, he stares on and blinks slow at the find. He’s just a number passed through the cracks and yet he’ll shadow her for hours. Her mind is busy creating his past and present, erasing what was left of his future.   

He joins her at the next job with a hole in his head and leaves soon after.

 

 

Cole gets curious, gets shot and she gains another set of footsteps in her track.

Her knees buckle and she thinks about reaching out and trying to stop the flood of blood coming from his body.

“Don’t do it, Shaw,” Cole says. “There’s no use.”

She stays in the room long enough to feel the press of Cole’s palm at her back, before he leans close and whispers in her ear.

“Run.”

And she does.

She runs until the lights turn red and there’s a needle in the curve of her neck.

“I never liked him.” Cole says, rolling over to watch her lids drift shut.

She thinks she tells him to shut up. To lie silent and enjoy the rush of foot traffic and the indifference of people as they avoid her fallen body.

She thinks she tells him to stay, just for a little longer, but her jaw is slack and her body is heavy and she wakes in a cemetery before words leave her lips.

 

 

And then Shaw meets Root. Not the woman hiding behind the masks, but Root.

With a smile that shines danger and eyes that don’t drop, she burrows her way in.

And, like the people Shaw’s mind tends to create, she stays.

 

 

But no one stays forever.

Her cynical manifestations hold shovels and help dig the hole in her chest.

Like every team she seems to find, the numbers descend on her arrival.

“How sweet,” Carter says as the glass skids to a halt. The whiskey ripples at the side. “I’ll drink it later.”

She won’t, and Carter winks her understanding before she disappears and the fire behind rages on.

 

 

“My father brought my mother here on their first date.”

She looks up, watches them dance between the tables to a song that isn’t playing.

Fusco is smiling wide, pushing champagne across and leaving. He can’t see what she can see, can’t watch her mother twirl with an arm outstretched, her father bend to wrap himself around her waist. He’s blinded by his sanity.

Shaw allows herself her own smile, remembers being young and creating this family in her head to protect herself from the loss.

They twirl and twirl and twirl. The view has never changed.

 

 

She falls and falls and falls. The ending will always be the same.

“Don’t look at her.” Carter says, standing nearby. Shaw can’t see her, but her voice is firm, her face set in stone.

She’s talking about Root, of course, the wailing mess in the elevator. The lighthouse in the storm spinning a light Shaw can’t find. The urge to turn, to seek Root out and see her one last time is almost overwhelming.

Again, though, Carter drags her back and bleeding. “Don’t give them the satisfaction.”

So Shaw spends her last breaths staring Samaritan down, watching Martine play with the trigger as the lift ascends into daylight and she descends into darkness.

 

 

She says, “they follow me around,” when she’s back. Lying in a bed beside Root, clarifies, “the dead.”

Root’s fingers are making patterns on Shaw’s back. She draws a figure of a ghost and then looks up.

Rolling her eyes, Shaw starts to turn over before Root moans and pulls her back onto her stomach. Whispers, “such a heavy heart,” and traces the outline of the traitorous organ. “You don’t fool me, Sameen.”

Root doesn’t explain what she means. Neither does Shaw.

 

 

And then it’s too late.

The floodlights are homed in on her direction. The weather is cold and Shaw can smell rain coming.

Reese turns, shakes his head and she drops. Not actually, of course, she’s experienced by now and her armor stabilizes before the loss can register. The hole quickly webbing around her body flinches and grows until she’s hollow.

“Oh.” She hears from behind.

Root.

“Oh.” Quiet, pale, dead.

Her mind is excellent, her memory on point. This woman filled every inch of Shaw at times and her creation doesn’t falter.

 

 

Below, the subway is breaking.

The light above flickers, plays with the level of fade before cloaking her in darkness.

Shaw still sees her, though. Heal clicking, toes scraping, Root circles the pillar she’s leant against and Shaw feels blocked.

“I thought it would be bigger,” she says, arms reaching out. Cheeks filling and exploding the air inside. “Better.”

“You saved Finch.”

Root doesn’t reply until she’s rounded again, walking backwards into eyeshot. Brow raised and smirk twitching, she mutters, “that’s hardly something I haven’t done before, Sameen.”

“Arrogance isn’t a good color.” She says.

Root, cheeky as her dead counterpart, blinks slow and slides closer. “Sweetie,” she whispers, breath hot and yet non-existent, “you’re the one painting me this color.”

 

 

Fusco is a brilliant man, a better than average detective and loyal to the root of his teeth. Sometimes, though, his intelligence leaves something to be desired.

He spends ten minutes looking for a pen already strangled in his fist.

“Stupid thing,” he says, nodding to the offending marker. “Didn’t even see it there.”

And it makes her panic. Something spurs somewhere in her chest and the hope that sparks is infectious. She dampens the fire and asks, as calm as she can, “you saw Root, though, right?”

Shaw doesn’t look up, wouldn’t be able to continue in the face of his blatant pity.

“She was definitely dead.” It’s not a question, but she says it as if it could be.

It’s silent until Fusco sways on the balls of his feet, coughs into his palm and whispers, “Shaw-”

He doesn’t finish. She doesn’t need him to.

 

 

Her car is in park but she imagines reversing away, away, away.

“It’s my funeral.” Root says, picking at the fabric from the back seat. Casual, like the cemetery isn’t the destination routed into her map. “You’re missing your chance to wave me goodbye.”

She stares at Root through the rear-view mirror. “Funerals aren’t my thing.”

Root shrugs, says, “I’m your thing.”

She doesn’t go, finds the roundabout of her youth and spins.

 

 

Surprisingly, Finch survives by himself for a few days.

He corners her, places a hand on her left shoulder and stands in silence for three minutes.

“She’s dead.” He says, water brimming at his eyes. “She saved-”

“I know.” Shaw says, stepping away and out of his touch.

 

 

The voice is disconcerting.

The first thing the Machine says is, “I’m sorry.” And Shaw isn’t sure whether it’s apologizing for taking Root’s voice or for her death in the first place. Either way, she ignores it and sways until the nausea passes.

It’s unhealthy from the start.

“Who are you talking to?” The Machine asks, after Shaw fails again to ignore Root’s presence.

It makes her uneasy, hearing the same voice sound so different. “Thought you knew everything.” She says, moving on instinct to push the earpiece deeper.

“I may be brilliant,” it says, with the charm of a dead woman. “But I can’t read minds just yet.”

The same voice; warmer, closer, replica, “is that where we are, Sameen?” Root taps a finger where she’d once pushed the barrel of a gun. “You can’t keep everyone, Sweetie. The dead never leave your head.”

Through her shirt, she feels a nail trace the outline of a heart. It’s slow and jagged and the lines don’t meet, but Root’s singing in her ear and she remembers a safer time in crispy clean sheets.

“Such a heavy heart.” Root says. “You never fooled me.”

 

 

She’s assigned the subway, the detective and the flickering lights of an old game console.

She’s an arrow, a wounded soldier and savior of the misfits. Fusco bleeds out onto the train and she pushes a fist against his stomach.

The ringing in her ear stops, the voice disappears and the war ends in magnitude.

In the debris, the silence offers nothing. When the building comes down and Shaw’s left staring at the destruction, she knows. Briefly, she contemplates her inability to say goodbye. It hardly matters though, when he’s standing beside her, staring at the chaos.

“I should’ve known you’d make a mess.” She says, swallowing something like sick and regret.

Reese hums, croaky and underused. He squints his eyes in the simmering sun, says, “I wasn’t leaving without a party.”

There are no bodies left from this rubble, but lights flash and sirens sing and she remembers her father promising the passing of pain.

“Look after yourself, Shaw.” Reese says, when it’s dark and cold and lonely. “Don’t walk alone.”

 

 

Reese doesn’t mean this, she knows. It was her mind talking, after all, and she’s already been told she can’t hold on forever.

But Root won’t leave and Shaw can’t force herself to will her away.

“You once said,” Root says, legs swinging above a rooftop they’d climbed to. “It would be nice to go back.”

Shaw looks down to the city below, hums in acknowledgment but doesn’t return the stare.

“That this wasn’t the life you wanted.” There’s a pause, and then Root asks, “what did you mean?”

 

 

Fingers locked tight but trembling, the end was nearing and she’d meant this:

She’s ten and she tells her father to slow before the crash, to break early and swerve the animal running past. They survive and she doesn’t create him heavy in her mind. The hole is never formed and they go home.

Her mother isn’t stricken with grief, isn’t running after a child turned teenager who frequently talks to sad hallucinations. She attends hospital appointments and takes the pills in doses. Her family survives and the hole doesn’t grow.

Mirroring the emotions her parents teach, she feigns empathy and compassion and her residency passes without such catastrophic concerns. She saves lives, mostly, and sometimes she doesn’t. Her patients pass by and don’t linger on.

Perhaps she finds her way to Cole. To Carter and Reese. Finch and Fusco. Maybe their lives align and she trips into Root and doesn’t run away at the rare touches that linger and remind her of the way her mother and father would dance to the jukebox. The war is over, or never begun, and they all stay breathing and alive.

 

 

It doesn’t surprise her at all, when the phone rings on her passing.

The street is teaming with people, pushing and pulling in all directions, but she knows the call is for her.

Bear is there before she is; the voice on the other end is a lifeline.

She looks up to the camera and watches it flash life back.

 

 

With the Machine back up and running, the urge to search and finally get an answer comes to the forefront.

She types it in several times, says aloud, “search for,” and can never finish the sentence.

In the end, she goes back to the roundabout and spins until she feels sick. Until she stumbles from the metal railing, feels real and grounded amongst the dying grass. It’s winter now, summer passed slow in the breeze and fall of her people.

Eventually, one week before the snow starts to hit, she trips from the roundabout and carries enough courage to the renovated safe-house to execute the search. The Machine knows enough not to ask questions, assists in the voice it probably doesn’t realize it’s searching for.

 

 

It doesn’t take long for her head to catch up with her actions.

Shaw’s busy working on a number when she looks up to the screen in the corner, still searching and searching and searching.

“What are you doing?” Root asks, suddenly stood beside her, walking closer to the mapping being scanned in front. “What are you searching for, Shaw?” She knows the answer, of course. Still, she doesn’t receive a reply. “Who are you searching for, Sameen?”

Abandoning the work she’d started on the drug-dealing housewife, Shaw stands straighter and says, “you know who.”

Root nods. Acknowledgement rather than understanding. “Lionel saw-”

“Fusco sees two and two and makes five.” She says. “There’s a chance.”

Root is quiet for a long time, long enough for Shaw to walk across the subway to the weaponry. She begins to prepare a bag for the mission at hand, feels Root’s stare at her back and hears a long sigh before words.

“I’m part of you, Sameen.” Root says, still where Shaw left her at the screens. “Some part of your mind you created when you were a little girl and didn’t understand this thing that you had. This thing that stopped you from feeling the way others did and made you lonely.”

Shaw stops, breathes in and looks up. “And what’s your point?” She asks.

“My point is, I’m here to protect you.” Root says. She looks back, then, at the screens and the identical face the Machine is searching for. Her eyes are sad when she looks back, sad and cold. “You need to stop looking for me.”

For a brief moment, she’s knocked into silence. “Stop,” she repeats and spits at the taste. “How can you say that? How can you say that when you won’t leave me alone? You’re still here, Root, you haven’t gone anywhere. You’re following me around like a dead parasite and I can’t get rid of you. Don’t ask me to leave you behind, because you didn’t leave me first.”

She’s managed to get closer, somehow, without really intending to. Root backs her up into one of the pillars and presses her lips to the shell of Shaw’s ear. “Normally, I’d find it sweet,” she says. “But I’m only here because you can’t let me go.”

 

 

Finch sends a letter and it arrives wet and soggy from the rain.

Fusco produces a pair of reading glasses, new and regrettably prescribed, and reads it aloud.

He’s alive, is all Shaw remembers from the writing. He’s alive and safe and well.

 

 

Almost a month after the task was set, the Machine stops searching.

Before Shaw makes it to the screen, Root’s read the results and composed her expression.

“Well,” she says, turning on the spot. “She’s answered your question.”

Shaw stares back, savors the moment for a little longer. Regardless of the answer, closure will come and Root will be gone from here. Dead or alive, her mind won’t allow her to stay much longer after this.

She walks into view of the screen, passes by Root’s shoulder and scans the results displayed above.

“Root?” She calls, turns and finds her gone. “Have you left already?”

Behind her, a map flashes the answer.

 

 

 

\--

 


End file.
